Harold Pinter’s biting and gritty drama comprising an ill assorted trio of men each with a dysfunctional life trying to exist together, could have found three no finer actors than Jonathan Price, Tom Brooke and Peter McDonald to portray them.

Pinter based his play on a strange real-life scenario that he witnessed when living in a flat in a house in Chiswick owned by one of two brothers, one of whom lived in a room there and who brought home a tramp to share his room for a few weeks.

Jonathan Price plays Davies, the tramp, living under an assumed name and with his ‘papers’ mislaid to prove who he is, a shambling old man, down on his luck but basically churlish and ungrateful for any help offered. Rescued by Aston, (Peter McDonald) the dreamy and defective brother who offers to share his junk-filled room with him and who seems impervious to the old man’s repetitive ramblings until his jabbering through the night penetrates his consciousness and he wishes the arrangement to come to an end.

To complete the triangle, Aston’s sharp and wily brother Mick, played by Tom Brooke, prowls the house, thuggish behaviour never far from the surface, one moment tormenting the old tramp and the next trying to befriend him. Each brother has offered the tramp a job as caretaker of the shabby house and he means to get the most out of this by playing one brother off against the other.

Jonathan Price as Davies takes most of the stage with his changing personality, by degrees incoherent, belligerent and cringing and somehow bringing the mastery of black comedy to each. However, the brothers have their time too, and Aston’s recollection of his incarceration in a bleak mental hospital, betrayed by his mother signing the consent form for his barbaric treatment (electro-convulsive treatment much vaunted in the 60s when the play was written as a cure all for various forms of mental illness) is the more moving for the matter of fact delivery of it.

For all the misery of the situation of the three, there are many comical moments that produce humour, and laughter to lighten the play, and at the end the packed audience gave the cast much well deserved applause for the excellence of the piece.

Jacquie Vowles